Prepare to be amazed as we uncover the transformative impact of AI on your business's online strategy. This episode, featuring the insightful Dan Sirois, CPO & Co-Founder of Punchmark, offers an exclusive look into the future of client engagement and web development.
We talk about Punchmark's new Creative Strategy Assessment and how it provides unique insights into your business based on the results collected from the hundreds of active jewelry retailers Punchmark maintains as clients. We break down the mechanics behind this digital sorting hat, bringing tailored insights and recommendations to businesses like never before.
Try out Punchmark's Creative Strategy Assessment: https://www.punchmark.com/creative-strategy-assessment
Learn more about Nivoda here: https://nivoda.com/loupe
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Prepare to be amazed as we uncover the transformative impact of AI on your business's online strategy. This episode, featuring the insightful Dan Sirois, CPO & Co-Founder of Punchmark, offers an exclusive look into the future of client engagement and web development.
We talk about Punchmark's new Creative Strategy Assessment and how it provides unique insights into your business based on the results collected from the hundreds of active jewelry retailers Punchmark maintains as clients. We break down the mechanics behind this digital sorting hat, bringing tailored insights and recommendations to businesses like never before.
Try out Punchmark's Creative Strategy Assessment: https://www.punchmark.com/creative-strategy-assessment
Learn more about Nivoda here: https://nivoda.com/loupe
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Welcome back everybody on In the Loop where we talked about the emergence of artificial intelligence or AI, and now we're talking about how it's still in our lives and how it's kind of adapted and the ones that we find the most useful.
Speaker 1:But we're also talking about how Dan wove AI kind of technology into the new punchmark creative strategy assessment, into the new Punchmark Creative Strategy Assessment, and what the CSA is is the first touch point for a new client or a client that's upgrading their website with us, and it uses artificial intelligence to really kind of boost the experience and it's really cool. If you're interested, you should try it out. It's punchmarkcom slash creative dash strategy dash assessment and I'll have it in the show notes below, but we'd really recommend that you try it out. It's punchmarkcom slash creative dash strategy dash assessment and I'll have it in the show notes below, but we'd really recommend that you try it out. It'll give you some insights on your own website and it's just a really cool experience. You'll kind of understand what we're talking about. I hope you enjoy our talk about this. Stick around and we will see you next time.
Speaker 2:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. What is up everybody? I'm joined by Dan Lesteroy. He's my boss and also the CPO and co-founder of Punchmark. How are you doing today, dan? How's it going? Doing all right. We're talking about AI. You're making your long awaited return. Last time you were on was last season, episode 27. And we were talking all about emerging uses of AI. Pretty crazy. That was only like six or seven months ago and AI has made some insane jumps forward. It's wild.
Speaker 3:Feels like an eternity since that last one. But yeah, you're right. I mean, there's been so much that's changed since we last spoke and I'm excited to get on and talk about it again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so funny, I think, that I'm almost hesitant because I think at this point pretty much everybody who's going to try AI has tried it. And I'm also worried that, like, maybe they tried the version that was out, you know six, seven, 10 months ago and maybe they got like a weird taste because like, let's be real, chatgpt was, like you know, not great and like that was probably their first instance of it. But now I mean it's really good.
Speaker 3:And I think a lot of people are also hesitant to download ChatGPT and they don't want to associate with it or they think it's going to steal their identity or something. And now you're starting to see it pop up in a bunch of different companies, where they're all making AI accessible through their own platforms, like Spotify or Adobe or all those other companies. It's super cool.
Speaker 1:Is that? That seems like kind of like the hidden sauce when it comes to why OpenAI was so important and why it continues to be kind of like the forerunner is because it's so easy to tie in. Is that kind of like the? Am I right on that? It's partially.
Speaker 3:that is because it's so easy to tie in. Is that kind of like that? Am I right on that? It's partially that I think it's a lot of large money backing as well, but also, you know, they're just sort of the pioneer of it. So I think they have a big head start on the amount of data they've been able to collect and how quickly they're able to progress, whereas a lot of the other companies are sort of just piggybacking off of what they've started.
Speaker 1:So, for people listening, openai is the company that runs ChatGPT. Chatgpt is just one iteration of AI. It's chat-based, which means people are very comfortable using it because you can just write in kind of like a chat window and it'll return back to you. So that's kind of the basis. So when we refer to one, we're referring to both Is ChatGPT and OpenAI. Is that primarily what you're interfacing with when you're using AI, or what are you using mostly? I'd say it used to be. I would say now it's a little bit more well-rounded.
Speaker 3:We use another one called Copilot. Copilot yeah, we use that on the development side. All of our developers now have downloaded Copilot and we all code with AI Assistant all day long, and it's encouraged by us because there's a lot of good benefits. One it's going to check your code as you write it so you can prevent errors and mishaps, typos, odd stuff, some of which I guess maybe your basic code editors did already. But this just does it a little bit better and gives you some explanation why.
Speaker 2:And it also can help you write some of it.
Speaker 3:So if you have really redundant code, where you're, I don't know, making a bunch of buttons or something like that, it'll recognize what you're doing and sort of speed up the process and help you. So like, have you ever been writing in like Google or Microsoft Word or whatever, and it'll sort of auto-complete a thought as you're writing it, google or Microsoft Word or whatever and it'll sort of auto-complete a thought as you're writing it. Picture that, but with a bunch of code and not just a word.
Speaker 1:But several lines of code, so it's pretty handy. And what's funny is I remember when Google announced for Gmail, it was like and this will end your sentences for you, and I was like holy smokes, that's amazing. And now that's kind of like what it's doing, except instead of you know, just thanks sincerely and then autoplay it with your name. It's like doing that for PHP and HTML and CSS and doing all this stuff yeah, pretty much any language you can imagine. So let's talk about the most recent use of AI in the actual experience at Punchmark. So I'm the director of user experience, and one I definitely can't even take any credit for this.
Speaker 1:You built this awesome part of the creative strategy assessment, which is typically the first interaction that a lot of new clients or existing clients start with when they begin a new project at Punchmark and just to kind of maybe set the groundwork for everybody. We use this thing called a creative strategy assessment to get an idea of what your goals and what your personal branding is at your store. This isn't anything new. We've been doing this since, I mean, I've been here and you've been doing it even further. Actually, when I applied to Punchmark, my application process was you sent me a creative strategy assessment of a client, and I had to design a website based off of it which is pretty cool that we came full circle, but now we have this kind of enhanced version of the CSA.
Speaker 1:Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure, well, yeah, like you mentioned, it's not something new.
Speaker 3:We've been doing this with clients every time we do a custom website, and it sort of gives us an idea of how to treat this customer, what specifications, what recommendations to make for them, what services might line up. And so the thought was, in order to scale this better and to give better, more consistent advice to, first of all it's not just AI advice to, first of all, it's not just AI, it's an algorithm and AI, but we created an algorithm that walks through the CSA questions, plus some new ones, and sort of determines a persona for your, for the person filling out the form, so it'll determine whether you're a community gem meaning somebody who is big in your community and all about local business, versus somebody who's, say, an e-commerce innovator, which is somebody looking to make lots of online sales and we have a few in the middle as well, a few other personas.
Speaker 3:But it'll make that determination and then make some recommendations at the tail end of it based on which persona it found you to be, and not just the one persona, but everybody's a couple of personas at once, nobody's one dimensional. So it sort of understands that and has that nuance when it describes back to you the recommendations and why and all that. So really the idea was to make sure we were giving a consistent experience with quality to all customers who are filling out the CSA and give them instant feedback, so that it wasn't such a slow process and we weren't dropping anything through the cracks and not to be pointing any fingers at anybody filling out or start reading CSAs that came in.
Speaker 3:But it's easy to read a big, a whole big, you know a bunch of questions that somebody answered and sort of latch on to eight out of 10 and focus on that and sort of forget that maybe those other two questions were important and this sort of eliminates that by you know, having that as raw data that we can always use and always go back Definitely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so maybe just also just to expound upon what you're saying. So the term persona so that's definitely something that we've used a lot internally, but it might be the first time someone that's listening is just hearing it. Just to give everybody an idea. Persona is actually a term that we use in user experience design a lot when it comes to understanding the subsects of people who might be using a tool most often. So we always use personas when we were talking about, like, what are our possible clients or possible people who might be interacting with it. So here's an example site manager, when we were designing for site manager.
Speaker 1:A lot of times we have clients with different levels of familiarity and we have people who are extremely what we call tech fluent or tech literate, which is people that just spend a ton of time online, and we have the exact opposite, which is like people who don't spend any time online. They are very much like the. They want to send their checks by mail. Nothing wrong with that. It's just a different subsect, and what we need to gear certain tools to is, you know, making sure that we service the people. That we're trying to, you know, intentionally service, and we do that also with the client base. I mean at Punchmark we have like 450 something clients and those they fall into what we consider kind of like buckets and everybody special in their own way. But it's important for us to kind of break down what the goals of certain buckets are going to be. And that's another word for persona.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's essentially. It is making sure that we identify common goals and then add strength in numbers. By having people aligned in that same persona, we're able to put more emphasis and effort into solving problems for those goals, Instead of being all over the place and doing one-offs for every individual customer. We can focus on the different types and then provide stuff that's going to be more sweeping across all clients.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so let's peek behind the curtain on this thing. Um, first of all, what does the csa actually look like right now? Um, like, how do they actually interact with it?
Speaker 3:sure, so, right now it's a, it's a wizard form, so it's a big it's sort of like when you do your taxes, if you use uh, turbo, tax turbo tax, that's not sponsored.
Speaker 3:No, it'll pop up one big question at a time. It's multiple choice. So there's, you know, you could just click through it real quick and just see what it does if you wanted to. But um, it's not. It's not a big open-ended, thought-provoking quiz or anything. It's going to be very simple, straightforward, common things that everybody would answer as well as it does give you some opportunity for some open-ended if you have specifics that didn't fall into the questions that it asks you.
Speaker 3:And once it completes with that, it goes through and grades your answers based on which persona it determines you to be and it's going to give you a different grade for each persona, so you can kind of see how much of a community gem are you or how much of an e-commerce guy are you, and it helps. I think it's very insightful. It's almost like reading your horoscope. It may not be very similar, but I think it does give you a lot of insight and it's like this is actually a little more accurate than I thought it would be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what's actually really kind of cool about it is the first iteration of of one of these persona generators I've ever I've ever interacted with was actually for which Hogwarts house are you going to be in? You know, and it's very similar. So if you just, you know, replace the term Hogwarts house with website persona, it's pretty much the same thing. So you know what is the question of. You know, are you strong or are you, um, you know quick, and it's like it doesn't really matter what the answer is, but like, strong might be weighted as a plus four to Gryffindor house and quick might be a plus four to Ravenclaw, and then, if you're in the middle, maybe it's plus two to these other ones. And basically, what you're kind of doing is this is a really dumbed down way of explaining an algorithm is like you're just summing those totals and then returning a value. That's like, hey, you are most like Gryffindor because of your answers. You got it. That's so funny and we're we're basically sorting people into Hogwarts house.
Speaker 1:Dan is the sorting hat. There you go. That's a. That's how this thing works. Hogwarts house.
Speaker 3:What would I be?
Speaker 1:Dan, I think you are. You're pretty smart, so I put you down in Ravenclaw, you're definitely pretty, pretty brainy. I don't know what that means, but I'll tell you. Oh my God, man, he's got wait until your daughters read those books. Okay, all right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1:This episode is brought to you in part by Novota. Strong margins and sales are key to running a successful jewelry business, but with cash tied up in stock and high diamond prices from limited suppliers, it can be difficult to gain an advantage over your competition. With access to over 1.6 million natural and lab-grown diamonds, melee and gemstones at the best prices, novota's online marketplace levels the playing field, allowing smaller or growing jewelers to compete with the giants. And with Novota's team of experts handling everything from QC to invoicing and shipping, you'll have more time to focus on your customers and growing your business. But Novota doesn't only provide a place to source diamonds. They help you sell them too. And whether you operate online or run a brick and mortar store, with Novota's powerful retail tools you can showcase hundreds of thousands of diamonds to your customers via feeds on your website or the Novota showroom customer facing platform to present them with the perfect diamond at their very first consultation. You'll never have to turn a customer away again when you always have exactly what they're looking for.
Speaker 1:If today is the day you decide to take your jewelry business to the next level, then book a demo at Novodacom. Slash in the loop, that's N-I-V-O-D-A dot com, slash I-N-T-H-E, l-o-u-p-e. Thanks, and now back to the show, and we're back. Just a little bit more on the CSA, though. What kind of insights is it giving these people when they finish? So they fill out? I think it's like how many questions is it? It's like it's like 15 questions, 10 to 15, or something like that.
Speaker 3:It might be around 20 now. We added a few more recently for reading into some of the financials as well, so we know how large your store is to make other and what's it returning?
Speaker 1:So is it like giving you you said it gives some like, almost like advice at the end?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it wants to gives you the persona. It'll then go through and describe what that persona means based on your answers, and then it'll also give you common goals of that persona. So if someone like that was doing a website, these would be the common goals that that person would have. Then some insights, meaning it'll look at punch marks, specific products and services, and go through the ones that are most aligned with that persona and then sort of describe why that's important to that persona and what it means to them. And it's different for each one. It's not always the same as you would think. You know.
Speaker 3:Websites people say well, websites website, but it's not like your call to action could be more based on getting foot track versus making online sales, and that's a huge difference in the way that every page should be constructed, if that's what your goals are, so it knowing that makes a big difference in the way it makes the recommendations and how we can service you once you receive them.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, just think a couple different examples of this in real life. I just had car work done, so I was looking on their website and the website for this mechanic, all of the call to actions are to make an appointment or the store hours, essentially so like come, stop by. So when you think about the we call them CTAs call to actions, the CTAs for them stop by or make an appointment. But then if you think about a different website I mean, amazon is so within reach, but we'll just do something easier than that We'll say nikecom All their call to actions are going to be about, you know, at the cart.
Speaker 1:At the cart and make an appointment are two completely different CTAs that both lead to business. But if you have, it doesn't really make sense for an at the cart, for a mechanic, and it doesn't make sense for you to have a stop by the store when it's, uh, you know, an online retailer. So those are two completely different ctas and that's why we have these design options, right, dan. So, um, can you maybe talk about, like the new website builds that you've been spending all the time?
Speaker 3:absolutely so in the same vein of what we've been discussing with the personas, we're starting to design our new line of templates, which just came out in January.
Speaker 3:We have eight to start. They're all based on the different personas, so that allows us to sort of have some alignment option or things that are aligned with those personas, pre-done and ready to go, that will service those goals. So everything from whether you're a custom jeweler or one of those community gems or a luxury brand which maybe carries a lot of large brands and you know you're a little bit more imagery based, they're always going to be. It's going to change the design and how you want to present yourself as well, as you mentioned. So, yeah, that was, that's the idea behind it, and we're going to continue to add to that group as we grow and maybe even develop new personas. I don't want to lock it into just those four, but that's been our bread and butter so far and it's been pretty good. I can't complain and I think the customers that have taken it did get some value out of it.
Speaker 3:They enjoyed the experience and not many people were digging around through all the different templates to try to pick one. Unknowingly they kind of were like, yeah, that sounds great and that is fine, those are my goals and it's been pretty smooth.
Speaker 1:That's. One thing I've learned is that more options is actually not always better. It's actually like one good, solid, tailored option is actually better.
Speaker 1:When you think about these like really, uh, what's like the most bougie experience, like getting a custom suit or getting a custom shoe, those types of experiences a lot of times they're not bringing you out 50 suits. A lot of times they're giving you like five or they're saying, you know, you fill out some arbitrary CSA and then they are presenting with one and then you can kind of divert from there depending on your own personal taste. But I think that that's the number one thing I've learned is I used to think that it was all about, like you know, getting as close as possible to a luxury retail experience for every client, and that's kind of what we were doing for a little while. But now it's like you know, some stores they have just different goals and they want to have this online presence that speaks to their in-store presence, and I think that having really locked down and nailed down beautiful versions of it caters to them a little bit better than just, you know, having a lot of different options, I guess.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Well, very well said, and I think as we continue to grow the program, we'll add even more templates and personas again. That'll follow into that and, yeah, I'm excited to see where it goes. I think it's working well.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So one last thing. I guess I kind of want to talk about the idea before we cut to an ad really quickly. I want to talk about the idea of this kind of upgrade your website idea and for a long time a majority of our clients they would sit on their websites for, uh, you know, about three, three and a half years sometimes and we felt like I would never use the term rot, but I feel like it would kind of lose some of its shine, mainly because if you go to a website and it's the same thing over and over, you're not kind of lose some of its shine, mainly because if you go to a website and it's the same thing over and over, you're not kind of getting that um sense of a lot of times we refer to this term of the light uh, you're not getting that wow, uh in there, and I'm hoping that we've lowered a lot of the price in the upfront cost and a lot of this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Um, that I'm hoping that people do new websites more often. Is that kind of crazy, I mean? I mean, obviously we're a website company, but I'm like I want to kind of make it so that you can upgrade your website whenever you feel like you want something new, instead of it having to be like oh, let's get a brand new car. It's like no, let's get like a new phone or something.
Speaker 3:It was an initiative of punch marks this year to become a little bit more flexible with the way we do our monthly pricing and the way we allow upgrades to happen, instead of having a big cost barrier up front where they sort of have to put down a large down payment and it's all high pressure to just stretch it out over the length of what the time your website would expire.
Speaker 3:Similar to a phone, you know, and we brought up this example many times in the past. So you know everyone has a phone and you buy it and you use it for a certain amount of time and then your phone gets paid off and you're happy. You don't have a phone bill anymore. Your price goes down after a little while. You get sick of that phone and you want a new one.
Speaker 3:Does it mean phones are trash or that company was bad? No, you just. You just want the new good stuff and I think us doing it that way allows us, especially with these persona-based templates as being the driving force. It really allows us to sort of cater to that and come out with a new line of websites for every season, and that's going to be our plan moving forward. So I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 3:I think we're going to be able to produce a better quality product when we're doing it on our own time and sort of putting all of our eggs into the basket and energy and the goals of the persona, as opposed to trying to do it one time for one customer within a window, which obviously we're able to do, but when you have a whole year to think about it, you're just going to get a better result. So I'm really excited about it. I think it's a good shift and so far clients have been super happy with what they look like and what they're getting with those packages, because we're now also giving away up to 10 pages inside those templates that all match the same template, so you kind of get a full experience like a custom site, even though it wasn't custom but it feels very custom. So, yeah, it's been great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of like I mean, back in the day. It's crazy to think back on version five. A lot of times we were just doing homepages and then everything on the inside pretty much standard, but now you're getting like these. It's much deeper experience, and the reason why we're doing this, I mean here's the transparency. We've seen that the clients that have custom inner pages like great landing pages. They just do better and it's like wouldn't it be rude of us to gatekeep that behind dollars? It's like, no, let's have all of our clients be doing really well online and let's just make it so that you, if everybody's doing well, then we're probably going to be doing well as well.
Speaker 1:so I I totally agree dan, we're going to take a quick break, we're going to come back after an ad and I want to talk a little bit more about how ai is influencing, uh, your life and how you're kind of integrating it into your workflow.
Speaker 4:So stay with us everybody hey jay, hey mike, are you going to be?
Speaker 1:at the client workshop? You know I will. What is going to be going on? Give me an overview. I'm trying to decide if I'm going.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I mean we're going to have a lot of great presentations from Punchmark employees. We're going to be talking about new site manager features, some marketing strategies, some website content strategies, also have time for our clients to work one-on-one with their account manager, and we're going to have a roundtable with other Punchmark users, so hopefully that'll be some great information. We also have some great partners that will be talking, like the Edge Jewelcraft, pickup Media, the Gem Lightbox guys and Simplex National Rarities, so should be really informative.
Speaker 4:Nice, and then you're going to be doing dinner, are we? Doing dinner this year, of course. So after the first day, we're actually going to do a happy hour Monday night on the roof of Fahrenheit, which is always a great time, and then, yeah, dinner at Finanfino on Tuesday night and also a welcome reception on Sunday night. That would be April 28th, so the whole thing will take place April 28th to the 30th. I hope to see you there, my friend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If people are, you know, trying to get in last minute where should they sign up?
Speaker 4:They should sign up at punchmarkcom slash workshop.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a good time and we will see you there in Charlotte, north Carolina. All right, everybody, we're back, still talking with CPO and my boss, dan Soroy, co-founder of Punchmark Dan. I want to talk about AI a little bit more. We led off with it and how you know you tied it into the new creative strategy assessment and we talked a little bit about how you actually have it in your coding. I use it a lot, but I like it more like a garnish on my experiences as opposed to like the actual entire experience. For example, I really like the Spotify AI DJ. I example, I really like the spotify ai dj. I don't know if you've ever used that, but it's like, uh, you click it and it's like some like really cool guys like what's up, mike, how you doing? I'm uh, I'll play you some tunes from 2016 you liked, and it's like, okay, I'll listen to 2016 tunes. Um, what have you been using it for? How do you find that it?
Speaker 3:kind of integrates. I'll double down on that and say that my wife is so sick of my Spotify playlists that she won't even allow me to put them on in a car trip. So we go ahead and turn on the little AI assistant.
Speaker 1:Nice Keep things fresh.
Speaker 3:Look at this. I totally agree with that. Some other really cool ones. I know Adobe, firefly is a big one and they're starting to do the generative AI. You can say you have a picture of yourself in portrait and you say I need to make a good banner with this, but I don't want to reconstruct this background. I could, but it's like I got to take a Photoshop class and hire somebody on Fiverr or something.
Speaker 2:Now you just drag a big box and hire somebody on Fiverr or something.
Speaker 3:Now you just drag a big box and it sort of just calculates it and creates it, and then you know if you don't like it, do it again, do it again. Do it again, and it's really good.
Speaker 3:You can hire a tech tool sometimes but man, what a time saver that was. I mean, I remember taking Photoshop classes and learning the little rubber stamp tool where you're grabbing somebody's you know background with 10 pixels box and you're trying to stretch that over a thousand pixels and it looks so bad, so bad. So having something to do that for you real quick is just such a time saver and that's. That's one of those things where you know if that's taking somebody's job, that is your job doing that.
Speaker 3:I think you're pretty happy that you're not doing that anymore yeah, I do.
Speaker 1:What's funny is, um, our art director, sarah. So what's funny is she showed this example of a. It was a model for a campaign, it was a or um, it had a model, but it was like the crop of the photo came right on the edge of the shoulder and she wanted it for whatever she was using it for. She wanted to have the full model and, uh, the shoulder, it. For her to have reconstructed that, the rest of the arm, it would have taken her literally all day.
Speaker 1:I've done, I've done something like that before and it literally and it never actually looks good, no matter how hard you try. You're trying to get like you know, know, because it's a tubular shape, you know arms aren't just flat and you're trying to build these things. All she did was she just expanded it and it literally did it over the course of like you know 30 seconds and it saved her an entire afternoon. If you're not using, if you have Creative Cloud and you have Photoshop and you're not using this tool, it's you're really missing out. So, totally agree, that's a super fun one.
Speaker 3:I'm also seeing a lot more of the image generation stuff, generally speaking, so I know I stock has it now built right into the website. Uh, even good old chat gpt is now doing image returns right there in the chat. So if you can ask it for a mock-up of something and it'll, it'll make it.
Speaker 2:Make an attempt at it, um version in Midjourney was really the only one that was usable in the beginning and it's kind of nested in this Discord platform.
Speaker 3:It's cool if you're into that, but I think a lot of people don't find that very accessible or easy to get to. Even the process of making one and having to know the commands and stuff was very difficult. That's becoming way more accessible now, so that's been really cool. Also the video ones, which is super creepy. I don't know if you want to go down that rabbit hole.
Speaker 1:The video one is it's weird because I see that it's bad right now. You know, it's like the lighting shifts and stuff like that. And what I know about AI is that it is going to get way better and the fact that it's this good and it's still like what I would call bad, I'm like, oh shit, it's. It's going to be. Really there's going to be a mark, my words, in the next 10 years there's going to be a completely AI generated um film or animated film or something that will go on to win a Grammy and then they will like announce that it's a grant, that it was AI made, and then people are going to be like, holy shit, you know that's going to happen. I don't know.
Speaker 3:I'll say there, there's got to still be some humans behind there, because that you know AI is great and it does things in such a good way, but you still need human judgment, you know even when we're in the AI all day long.
Speaker 3:You know, if you didn't know what that code said, you have no idea what it's injecting into your code base. So you really got to figure out. You got to know, like, how to read it, how to write it. And what I found quite cool about it, just from a general standpoint, is, you know, I think it's going to eliminate the entry level position altogether for a lot of jobs across the board, and that doesn't mean that we don't still hire entry-level. It just means, when you're entry-level, what that's going to mean is you're more of a director right out of the box. Right out of the box. Your skill set as a new graduate. I know, my children included they're going to have to learn to manage and direct other things that aren't in their brain right out of the box, and it's probably going to be a robot or an AI, and I think that's just really cool. You know, as long as we always keep that perspective, that it's not like the rise of the machines and it's more like the rise of the calculator.
Speaker 1:It's such a good tool you know across the board. That's a great way to frame it. I think you're right. I see it all the time as a hammer or a forklift, where it's like is the forklift going to build your project? It's like no, but your project will be so much easier to build with this tool.
Speaker 3:I like to call it the language calculator. You ask it something and it calculates real quick and it spits it out very eloquently. And I got to say I use it for emails a lot, not that I'm just going to send an email right out of chat GPT, but you know I have a tendency to move pretty quick and my emails can be a little scrappy and I'll take it and just let it be my editor.
Speaker 3:Just ask him hey, does this sound OK? Could I say this in a better way? And I won't copy paste it, but it'll give me some advice. You know what that is a better way to you know what that is. Say that, and you know. You know, you know how very well that emails or texts and things can be misconstrued or not read properly. It's kind of important in this day and age to make sure that stuff's good.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so, and it's just like making sure that you're making sure that you're not like too um, uh, brisk or like flippant in your responses when you're not intending it to be. It's just like. I am trying to move on to the next thing and I have like I have anxiety about like writing email sometimes and it's just like can you just like help me? But I mean related to that is I find I take a lot of notes in meetings. I'm typically the guy who takes all the notes, especially in all hands, and one thing I've learned is it's really good, especially in all hands, and one thing I've learned is it's really good.
Speaker 1:A chat GPT is really good at turning bullets bulleted format into long form format. So what I could do is typically just take all the bullets from an all hands. I tried this out this past week and I pasted it right into chat GPT. I was like hey, can you turn this into long form? And it basically wrote me a five paragraph little dissertation that was like here's what's covered in all hands and it's like this is good for certain things. If someone wasn't at the meeting, send that to them, and then suddenly it's really digestible and it's just like that kind of stuff. If I was to write it myself. It would have taken me a long time. So it's just a nice utility. Agreed.
Speaker 3:I think you know Punchmark's mission is to do that, to add efficiencies, internally and external. So you know, for our customers and our employees to do exactly that, just to make it easier and we got. We got some exciting ones that we're brewing on right now and I don't know if we want to spill the beans on any of them, but I mean some of them are pretty cool and I'm really excited about.
Speaker 1:I'll ask my boss can you spill the beans?
Speaker 3:on any. I'll say page creation is a definite. That's going down at some point and I don't know how deep it's going to go. But being able to take natural language and turn it into a page, even if it's not a finished page but just a nice rough graph that fits all the things that you need, that's definitely one. I think. Image creation, because it's becoming so available, that's probably one we're going to get in there pretty soon where you're able to sort of generate an image that doesn't exist in your library or your file manager and use it right on your website.
Speaker 3:Right there, Ticket summarization. Mike, that was your baby. That was a really good idea.
Speaker 2:Like taking somebody's issues and Mike, that was your baby.
Speaker 3:That was a really good idea. Basically, that's what you said, right, like taking somebody's issues and being able to make a to-do list.
Speaker 1:It's actually in reverse of what I would say. It's taking like a long form version and then turning it into a bulleted version, and it's just like think about how much more efficient our CS team will be if they can get. Instead of a long, longer story about how this button isn't working in this iteration, it's just like hey, on this page, fix this thing and this thing and then add this thing, and it's just a lot more digestible. So I think that that's a good one too. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Another good one not to get too shoot-barred. This is the last one, but navigation, yeah, Another good one, not to get too shubhard, but navigation.
Speaker 3:You know we've had a nav editor that works for a long time and it's still in the works. We'll probably get some instance of it done this year. But in doing it and working on it, we stumbled across the idea of we just take this entire sitemap, xml and a bunch of what we consider to be well done navigation systems, bounce it off that persona data a little bit and we could sculpt a custom navigation for somebody that's actually the pages they have in their database. That would be super cool. I don't know how possible that is, but we're going to experiment with it and, yeah, I'm super excited about where it's bringing us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in again. I think it's about steering into it. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when I was told constantly, hey, you needed to learn, especially back in like, yeah, like middle school, hey, you need to learn how to do long, long division, because you're not always going to have a calculator in your hand. And now it's like I have a calculator literally, literally on my wrist and you know, and it's really good and I can speak to it, and the fact I think that this is one of those things like I think that the days of hard coding, so like coding by hand, everything is kind of in its, like you know, last few hours, as opposed to now. I think it's going to be more about like playing editor and just kind of using it as the, the medium. I think it's going to be more about like playing editor and just kind of using it as the uh, the medium. I guess you could say.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. I would hate to move on without us mentioning one that already exists and is already in your platform if you're a Punchmark customer, but the ability to write edge descriptions descriptions, uh, for your, for all your different products um, that that's such a killer one, that one that's in Punchmark's platform right now. I know a lot of people's descriptions are really simple. It'll just say like ring or 14-karat ring. Being able to make that flowery and more digestible to the person on the website is going to increase your SEO and the experience at the same time. So it's a double win and it takes a second. Really cool, Really cool.
Speaker 1:We got to like punch that in, so every it should be like you have to opt out of it at this point because I think you're you're totally right. It makes it so much easier to uh to shop and and and makes you you want the item a little bit more, so really good, uh, I you know I should make like a one sheet or like some type of more additional info about that, because I think everybody should be using it at this point. So, dan, I can't thank you enough. This is super cool.
Speaker 1:I'm a big fan of the new CSA and we've had a lot of really good results with it.
Speaker 1:I think it just kind of starts the project off on the right foot and it really gets people excited, feels like things are already moving and grooving a little bit more in the beginning, as opposed to, you know, starting with a questionnaire and then us reading the questionnaire.
Speaker 1:It's like it's a little bit more punchy and I like that and everybody, if you're listening, I mentioned in the beginning of the episode most likely, but I really would love for you to try it out and let us know what you think. And you can find it at punchmarkcom slash, creative, dash strategy, dash assessment and it's right on punchmark, and I think it's cool because it'll maybe tell you some insights about your own goals and also maybe it'll correct you. If you're like, hey, I want to sell a ton of luxury jewelry online, maybe it'll recommend. Like, hey, if you're not spending any money on ad sales, maybe you know you should do that or adjust your goals. So I think it's a really cool tool. Dan, I can't thank you enough for doing it. It's a really cool, cool project. I know a lot of our clients who have just recently launched really like it as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was super fun. You know, honestly, as you can tell, I love playing with AI, and this was really just something that we wanted to do for fun and experiment, and it just kept going and we had we had pushed it straight through to the end because it was just we could see that it was providing value right out of the box. And that's kind of what we really wanted to do is make sure that, uh, whether you sign up with us or not, you know you're getting some insights and some information about not only what we do, but what you should be doing with your online presence. And, uh, yeah, I think it's, I think it's pretty successful than that.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think it's pretty successful than that. So we'll have all that and we'll actually include the link in the show notes below, so make sure you go check that out. It makes me look good too, if you try it out, and we will be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Dan, I can't thank you enough. Thank you so much for coming on. It was really fun. I love talking about it.
Speaker 3:Maybe every six months we'll revisit it. We could keep doing the AI. It seems like we got enough products coming soon that we can keep. That's right.
Speaker 1:That's a really good idea. Yeah, we'll do it every six months and we'll kind of do like a little check-in and we hope more of our listeners are trying it out. It's very accessible right now. Give it a shot, all right? Thanks everybody for listening. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Dan Teroy. He's my boss, cpo and co-founder of Punchmark, and this episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It's the best way to help us grow and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom. Slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. And one last plug check out the creative strategy assessment. It's in the show notes below. It's really cool. I think it's fun. Thanks, everybody, and we will be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye.